Pawlenty quits presidential race

AMES, Iowa — After spending much of his money to finish a distant third in the Ames Straw Poll, Tim Pawlenty ended his presidential bid Sunday.

“We needed to get some lift to continue on and have a pathway forward and that didn’t happen, so I’m announcing on your show that I’m ending my campaign for president,” the former governor said on “This Week.”

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The Minnesota Republican revealed his decision on an early morning conference call with supporters, an aide told POLITICO.

“I’m from a small state I don’t have a big national financial network, a political network, so measure of us was can you get some lift out of Ames if you will to get to the next round and that didn’t happen unfortunately. I wish it would have,” Pawlenty told ABC’s Jake Tapper.

Pawlenty meticulously prepared for the campaign, hiring a slew of consultants and starting to visit early states soon after the 2008 race ended. But with little name recognition and a dry persona, he never caught on with GOP activists looking for a dynamic candidate to take on President Barack Obama.

“What I brought forward, I thought, was a rational, established, credible, strong record of results, based on experience governing — a two-term governor of a blue state,” said Pawlenty. “But I think the audience, so to speak, was looking for something different.”

Pawlenty was unable to raise a significant amount of money and spent much of what he did bring in on TV and radio in the lead-up to Ames. Pawlenty had originally hoped to emerge as the chief alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, but he found himself pinned down in Iowa over the past six weeks trying to fend off the surging Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Some GOP strategists said Pawlenty had blundered in raising the Ames stakes by engaging Bachmann here and diverting his focus away from Romney, the national frontrunner.

“It was quite a head-scratcher,” said consultant Curt Anderson of Pawlenty’s approach to Bachmann. “He should have been engaging Romney. There was no chance of him getting anywhere attacking her. Even if it had worked, it would have failed, as he would have alienated her supporters. For them, an attack on her is an attack on them.”

But senior Pawlenty officials said they had little choice but to take on the Minnesota congresswoman in order to make a mark in Iowa, and at Ames, where they were hoping a win would have provided crucial validation and momentum.